"He had As and Bs on his report card," said Jeana Monroe of her son, RJ.

"Bright kid, really good with computers," said Mike Doyle about his son Jack.

"He could build anything you could possibly imagine," said Craig Witek, speaking of his son Gage.

They are three of the five families WISN 12 spoke to whose sons were deprived of growing up by a dangerous trend known as "the choking game."

The "game" involves cutting off oxygen and blood flow to the brain with a towel, belt or rope. The person hyperventilates until they pass out. When blood and oxygen rush back to the brain, it can create a euphoric high.

The practice can lead to brain damage, seizures, head trauma and in the case of the five families Palladino spoke with, premature death.

"You don't imagine something like this could come into your life and take (your child) away from you," said Kelly McCarthy, who lost his son Kyle. "A part of your soul is really taken away."

These families met as strangers, but embraced as friends as they started telling stories of their sons, and then began telling the stories no parent wants to tell: How their children died.

"I found my son with a (plastic) bag over his head and ligature around his neck," Witek said.

He said that it was only after his son had died that he started to put the pieces together.

"When we found these belts, we came to the conclusion that he had been using ligatures for a while," Witek said. "They didn't leave any marks, no headaches or the bloodshot eyes."

"He didn't wear belts, but he did have a number of them for when he did dress up," Joan Jensen said of her son, Mack.

It was after Mack passed away that the Jensens realized that the belts were used for a different purpose.

"I never thought twice," Jensen said.

"We found the belts underneath the bed and shoelaces tied together," Sue McCarthy said. "Things we found too late afterwards."

The families then shared stories of how they discovered the choking game.

Dan Jensen found his son standing up, a belt wide open attached to a loft bed and his son inside the belt leaning forward.

"That's how we found him," Joan Jensen said. "The belt was wide open."

Researchers in Oregon found that 6.1 percent of eighth graders had played the "game" at least once in their lives. Among those who had played, 64 percent had done it more than once.

Dan Jensen said parents need to know more about this silent epidemic.

"You talk to your kids about drugs, risky behavior, sexual diseases," he said. "So tell them this is as dangerous as putting a bullet into their head."

Jensen hopes the message will resonate with both parents and children.

"If you tell them how serious it is, and they see their friends doing it, they can educate their friends as well."

Jeanna Monroe wished she knew the warning signs before RJ passed away just two months ago.

"The week before he died, RJ had a red mark on his neck," she said. "I just want parents to realize that if there's a mark, ask a question. I didn't ask the question because I thought I was being too hard on him."

Some children who engage in the behavior might be overlooked because of myths surrounding it, said researcher Robert Nystrom. His 2009 Oregon study, published online in the journal Pediatrics, found that boys and girls almost equally participated in the game.

In 2008, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted 82 deaths due to the choking game from 1995 to 2007, but WISN 12 News has learned that numbers may be misleading as deaths from the choking game could be classified as suicide instead of accidental.

A 2010 article published in Pediatrics said of 865 pediatricians and family practitioners surveyed, one-third were unaware of the choking game.

Mike Doyle hopes that education will prevent another group of parents from meeting under these circumstances.

"There is no reason for us to be here," he said. "It was an accident. But it was something that, with the proper education, the proper knowledge, it didn't need to happen."